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Preserve

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Red cabbage salted, drained, and preserved in hot spiced white wine vinegar with cloves, allspice, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Red Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Take a fine firm cabbage of a deep red or purple colour.

  2. Strip off the outer leaves, and cut out the stalk.

  3. Quarter the cabbage lengthways, and then slice it crossways.

  4. Lay it in a deep dish, sprinkle a handful of salt over it, and cover it with another dish.

  5. Let it lie twenty-four hours.

  6. Drain it in a colander from the salt, and wipe it dry.

Make the pickle

  1. Make a pickle of sufficient white wine vinegar to cover the cabbage well.

  2. Add to the vinegar equal quantities of cloves and allspice, with some mace, all put in whole.

  3. Add a little cochineal to give it a good red colour.

  4. Boil the vinegar and spices hard for five minutes.

Pack and seal

  1. Put the cabbage into a stone jar.

  2. Pour the boiling vinegar over the cabbage.

  3. Cover the jar with a cloth till it gets cold.

  4. Put in a large cork, and tie a leather over it.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

117Calories
0 gProtein
12 gFat
3 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 7 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Allspice1 tsp ground (1.9g)5
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage (in the method)
Forms the crisp, sliceable body of the pickle and takes up the vinegar flavour.
Salt
Draws moisture out of the cabbage so it stays crisp and absorbs the pickle more evenly.
White wine vinegar
Acidity that preserves the cabbage and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Cloves
Add warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.
Mace
Adds a delicate, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying the cabbage after salting. Salting draws water out of the cabbage. If it is not drained and wiped dry, the extra moisture dilutes the vinegar and weakens the pickle's acidity and keeping quality.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, clove, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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